-LRB- OPRAH.com -RRB- -- One of the small sorrows of my adult life is being married to a man who wo n't eat tongue . `` It 's delicious , '' I tell him , but he wo n't budge . `` If you tasted it and did n't know what it was , you 'd love it , '' I say . `` The problem is all in your head ! ''

`` So ? '' he says , perfectly content with his head and its problems . `` I 'm still not eating it . ''

Undeterred , I describe the excitement I felt as a kid when I 'd lift the lid on my mom 's big frying pan and spy a beef tongue cooking there . `` It was curled -- you know , like that Rolling Stones logo , '' I say , `` only brownish gray , and covered in cream of mushroom soup , and , um ... '' I realize I 'm not making headway . Tongue is a hard sell to someone who has already placed it firmly outside his own personal sphere of comfort .

We all have versions of these spheres , into which we segregate the edible from the inedible . Culture and ethnicity play a huge part in what winds up inside them -LRB- we do not eat monkey ; the Penan of Borneo do -RRB- , as do our parents and friends , advertising , politics , religion , our anxieties , and life experiences . It 's no wonder each person in the Western world -LRB- where we have so much choice about what to eat -RRB- probably defines `` edible '' in a slightly different way . Our individual menus are as unique as our fingerprints .

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Take my friend Maria Ricapito . She is an adventuresome cook who is utterly incapable of eating an egg if the white and yellow are n't combined . She can eat omelets and scrambled eggs . But fried eggs ? Deviled eggs ? Hard-boiled eggs chopped up in potato salad ? `` I ca n't even choke them down , '' she says , her voice taking on a tinge of hysteria . `` Something about the texture -- you know how the yolks are kind of crumbly and the whites sort of rubbery and solid ? It just does n't work for me at all . ''

No one starts out life with an aversion to eggs or tongue -- or , for that matter , to liver , okra , lima beans , or any of the dozens of other foods many people come to revile as adults . Indeed , according to Paul Rozin , Ph.D. , professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in disgust and food choice , there are only a handful of flavors our brains are hardwired to reject , and all are typical of foods that historically had a high likelihood of making us sick -- spoiled things like moldy bread and sour milk , and bitter things like caffeine . `` A lot of natural plant toxins are bitter , '' he says . In addition to this self-protective mechanism , there are two other universal , built-in predilections : First , a suspicion of -LRB- yet interest in -RRB- unfamiliar foods . And second , the ability to connect something new we ate to certain consequences , such as nausea .

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That 's it . `` Everything else is acquired , '' according to Elizabeth Capaldi , PhD , provost of Arizona State University and a longtime professor of the psychology of eating . `` There 's no inborn dislike for any other taste or smell , even of vomit or feces . '' In other words , you ca n't blame genes when you pick the anchovies off your pizza . So where do we acquire our vast range of idiosyncratic dislikes ?

`` Their origin is obscure , '' says Rozin . He admits that we generally grow to dislike foods that remind us of our bodily functions , guts , or mortality -- which might explain why liver -LRB- and other mealy , pasty foods -RRB- and oysters -LRB- and other squishy , slimy foods -RRB- put off so many people .

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It might even account for Maria 's egg issue . She half-recalls overhearing as a child that eggs were chicken embryos , a thought that disturbed her in a way she still ca n't quite explain without turning green . Says Capaldi , `` Sometimes an idea produces an emotional reaction , and the emotion produces a physiological reaction '' -- namely , nausea . This is n't hardwired self-protective `` disgust , '' but it may have somehow piggybacked on the same apparatus . As Capaldi says , `` The disgust mechanism is a very , very powerful thing . Putting something in your body is an intimate act . '' Any revulsion you feel toward a food is magnified by the thought that it will become part of you .

This apparatus occasionally goes haywire . In 2007 BBC Television chronicled the struggle of David Nunley , a strapping 28-year-old father of two , to overcome a lifelong inability to eat anything but cheese , chips , and white bread . After four weeks of therapy and nutritional counseling , he managed to add salad to his diet ; hot food still made him gag .

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You do n't have to be as compulsive as Nunley to feel similar dread . History is full of stories of ordinary people who refused to eat unfamiliar food . The first colonists to America faced this predicament , myths of the first Thanksgiving to the contrary . They `` had come upon a land of plenty , '' according to Eating in America , by Waverley Root and Richard de Rochemont . `` They nearly starved in it . '' Why ? Because among other things , they `` could not or would not adapt themselves to the foods available locally ... and elected instead to depend on supplies from England . '' Close to death , many awaited shipments of English beef rather than swallow a morsel of lobster or a clam . The few among them who trusted the natives eventually provided a bridge to these strange new forms of sustenance .

It sounds perverse , until you consider what you would do if you washed up on the shores of Cheju island and were offered a meal of sautéed silkworm pupae . You , too , might bide your time , hoping for a box of Cap'n Crunch to float in on the waves .

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Yet , clearly , diets are n't set in stone . We constantly add new things -- goji berries , lemongrass , Splenda -- and reject others -- chicken nuggets , say , after seeing Food , Inc. `` You can think yourself into an aversion , '' says Capaldi . And most of the time , you can think yourself out of one .

Fuchsia Dunlop did . The English author of two Chinese cookbooks and a memoir , Shark 's Fin and Sichuan Pepper , she went to great pains to get past her revulsion to some of the foods she was fed in China -- including goose intestines , pig brain , scorpions , bee larvae , and tendons from cows ' throats , which she describes as `` just like rubber bands . '' Because the Chinese truly relish these foods , she wanted to learn to like them , too . It helped to realize that Chinese cuisine , which has been evolving for thousands of years , celebrates variety in textures -- slimy , chewy , gelatinous , crunchy -- the way French cuisine champions complexity in flavor . `` In China , the sensation of a thing in your mouth is part of the pleasure of eating it , '' says Fuchsia . `` In the West , if you get a bit of cartilage in your mouth , it 's the rubbish , but in China it 's the good part . It 's fun to try negotiating your way through a chicken wing with your teeth and tongue . ''

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Still , she admits that overcoming certain aversions required an iron will . Take `` thousand-year-old eggs , '' made by submerging raw duck eggs for three months in a brew of ash , lime , tea , and salt . `` The white turns into brownish jelly , and the yolk is a dark creamy thing edged in moldy green-gray . '' At first Fuchsia found them revolting , but now she eats them with abandon , having decided to `` think of them as the egg equivalent of blue cheese . ''

I ca n't say how I 'd react if served a thousand-year-old-egg , but , like Fuchsia , I see aversions as obstacles worth fighting to overcome . I 've been this way since I was a kid and vowed to taste an olive and an oyster every year until I grew to like them -- an outcome I had utter faith in .

But I must confess that my tolerance for odd foods sometimes makes me intolerant of other people 's aversions to them , and that 's not fair . Much as I 'd like to coerce my husband into eating delicious , slow-cooked beef tongue , I have to accept that only he can decide what to him is delicious , and what remains banished forever to the land of utter yuck .

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By Celia Barbour from O , The Oprah Magazine © 2010 Harpo Productions , Inc. . All Rights Reserved .

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There are only a handful of flavors the brain rejects , says Paul Rozin , Ph.D. , professor of psychology

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`` Revulsion you feel toward a food is magnified by the thought that it will become part of you , '' says one expert

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One woman loves beef tongue while her husband refuses to eat it

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Overcoming fear of foods can require `` iron will , '' says one woman who will try almost anything